son:DA & Erinç Seymen: Performance for a Poem 1 - Istanbul

Video, 2006, 16:28 min

son:DA & Erinç Seymen: Performance for a Poem 2 - Maribor

Video, 2006, 8:48 min 

The two-channel video is a performance and a site-specific installation realized in Istanbul (Platform Garanti) and Maribor (Umetnostna galerija Maribor). The low-resolution image allows a digital manipulation of video and sound made of pixilation, distortion, colour glitch, stretching of the image. The key role is played out by Seyman, reciting a Turkish poem of the 1930s, a remarkable example of nationalist rhetoric. The artists state: “We are witnessing a gravely evident transformation of everyday life by nationalism through a wide range of methodologies. These vary from direct propaganda to the subtle agitations involved in current agendas like the European Union negotiation process, debates about minorities and secularism. It is a time when critical and intellectual divergence is antidemocratically censored, punished and sabotaged through emotional and physical sanctions by the state.”  The sound and the video image are interrelated, the distortion of the sound and the particular noise cause a similar visual distortion of the image, building a disturbing atmosphere where any communication seems impossible. Rage and oppression are dominant. A technological modernity is filtered out through the interferences of the past, but it is not able to hide its contradictions and the weight of ideologies, intolerances, and censorships still present in contemporary society. The performances correspond to Slavoj Žižek’s notion that every genocide needs a poet.

Acquired from the DIVA Station Archive/SCCA-Ljubljana with permission of the artists. 

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Collective's web page: sonda.kibla.org